


Mother

by Bagel_San



Category: Fruits Basket, Fruits Basket - Takaya Natsuki (Manga)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt and comfort., I mean angst, Spoilers, When I say angst, after the attack on shiki, akito is crying, post canon/pre-another, shigure is sort of... soft for once., shiki is crying, tw: Ren Sohma mention.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:47:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23803333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bagel_San/pseuds/Bagel_San
Summary: [SPOILERS UP UNTIL THE END OF THE MANGA]Akito comes home after Shiki is attacked by Ren and all her regrets crash down on her.
Relationships: Sohma Akito & Sohma Shiki, Sohma Akito/Sohma Shigure, Sohma Shigure & Sohma Shiki
Comments: 4
Kudos: 43





	Mother

**Author's Note:**

> So. I wrote this in nanowrimo 2019 and I just fixed and edited some things because this was obviously speed-written haha. I gotta say, this isn't my best (looking at the writing lol, which is why it goes to my low-quality/smut account) but maybe you can still enjoy it? idk. 
> 
> But yeah, some trigger warnings:  
> -mentions of physical violence  
> -two mentions of sex (I wasn't sure if I have to up it to M because of that? if anyone knows that for certain, pls tell me afdhjkj)  
> -mentions of Ren Sohma because this woman is a trigger warning on herself. 
> 
> Also this contains TONS of spoilers for furuba and a few for furuba another (well, one, that is.).

Shiki in one arm, the key for the house in the other, Akito managed to open the door with trembling hands.  
it had been a crap kind of day. Those weren’t too common anymore. Not since the curse had broken years ago.  
Now that she wasn’t running around hurting people anymore, it had surely gotten better for everyone involved.  
But this day in particular should be dumped to hell.

“Mom”, the child in her arm sobbed, clinging onto her neck. He had been repeating the very same word the whole way back from the main estate. And that had been a rather long way.  
Akito lived in the main estate, yes, but right in this moment she had decided to get away from it as far as somewhat possible and it had ended up being the house Shigure had lived in all those years ago. Both of them still had the key and sometimes decided to go there for a few days for both her and Shiki’s health. The forest air was still better for them than the polluted air of the city.

“Mom…!”

“Sssh, everything’s fine.”

She knew nothing was fine. Of course not.  
Stumbling into the small flat, she reached for her phone, typing the number she had memorized in the past few years.  
She heard his breath when he picked up and didn’t even wait for him to say something.

“Shigure, please come to your former house. It’s important.”

“Hey, Akito, what’s-“

“Just get your stupid butt over here.”

She hated falling back into the habit of being like this to him, of being angry at him for stuff that was not even his fault.

“Alright then.”

Akito tossed the phone onto the table and sat Shiki down next to it. More carefully than the phone. Far more carefully. If he was ever to get seriously hurt, she would have no idea what to do or where to go.  
The tears were still running down his cheeks slightly, but more silently than back then.

“Are you hurt?”, she asked, keeping her voice quiet as to not scare him. She hadn’t been able to do this until Tohru had hugged her back in that hospital. After she had fallen down this cliff and it had been her fault. Somewhat. She hadn’t pushed her, after all.  
He shook his head, pointing at her cheek with his left hand. His hands were so small.  
She remembered her hands being this small once and them being held by Shigure and then Kureno.

“No, but mommy, you’re bleeding.”

“…What?”

She touched her cheek slightly and immediately felt the warm blood on her fingertips.  
She probably hadn’t noticed the pain due to all the stress she’d been in in the last hour.

“You’re bleeding, mom, are you ok? You’re not going to die, are you? She hurt you! Why did she hurt you…!”

In a swift motion, Akito had pulled the boy into her arms, trying to avoid pressing her bloody cheek against his, but in the end she did.  
He was still alive. She couldn’t have been more glad about something like she was about this right now. She had been relieved about Kureno being alive back then.  
She had been relieved about Rin being alive, as much as she hadn’t wanted to admit that.  
But now, it was about Shiki. Her own son. The person she loved more than anything else in the entire world.

“Why does Granny hate us so much…?”

“She isn’t your grandmother, Shiki. She’s just a-“, the word ‘bitch’ hung on her lips, but she refrained from saying it, “an old woman who has gone absolutely crazy. Compared to your father’s parents, she’s absolutely not a grandmother. And she doesn’t hate you. It’s just me. Don’t worry.”

She probably hated him too, Akito was well aware. Ren hated everyone who Akira could possibly have loved.  
Akito did wonder what life would have been like if he hadn’t died. What it would have been like if she didn’t look like her mother. Maybe Shigure wouldn’t have-  
This story was in another time. It was not of concern right now.

“But why…? Mom, how can anyone hate you…?”

Akito let out a dry laugh at that, remembering all the spiteful gazes after the curse broke, Momiji looking at her with such a feeling of disgust that the image had burned itself into her soul.  
It had probably been there when she had begun to notice her mistakes. How wrong it had been to keep Kureno around her when he hadn’t wanted to.  
When all he had done was to pity her because of how weak she was. 

“Shiki, listen”, she wouldn’t answer his question. He was five. It was not of his concern to understand what she had done, not yet. “You haven’t done anything wrong. Ren is just… crazy. She has loads of problems with her mind. It’s ok, you know?”

She felt tears gathering in her eyes, slowly making her vision blurred, she let go of Shiki a little and put her hands to his tiny shoulders.

“Shiki, don’t you ever dare think it’s your fault. I love you.”

It was honest. She didn’t say it as often as he deserved to hear it. After all those years of redirecting her emotions into words instead of violence, after all those long therapy sessions, she still wasn’t able to say it. But right now, she was.  
Ren had attacked her own grandson. Had wanted to kill him just like back when she had been trying to kill her own daughter after years of forcing her to live as a male when she had never explicitly wanted this.  
Really, Akito hadn’t minded too much. There were worse things in the world – the fear of losing everyone, for example. But still, it had hurt to see Rin being allowed to have long hair and wear the clothes she wanted to wear.

“I love you too, mom.”

Maybe this was what actually saved her.  
This little kid with her hair and his eyes.  
She stroked the bangs out of his face so that they wouldn’t fall into his eyes and hurt him. She loved him with everything she had, and it just made her cry even more.

“Mom, please stop crying.”

She wasn’t able to. This sweet boy was her real savior – along with Tohru, but he was more.  
Tohru had accepted and forgiven her. But she hadn’t loved her in the way a son loved his mother.

“I’m so sorry Shiki… I’m so sorry you had to watch this…”

The door was opened and she turned around, prepared to defend herself if it was Ren, but the person walking through the door was taller and broader than her.

“What happened?”, he asked, startled.  
Shigure Sohma startled. That was a thing Akito hadn’t seen very often. If the situation was a different one, she would have laughed.

“This f-“, she stopped herself from dropping the f-word, “Ren. Ren attacked him.”

In a few moments, Shigure had walked over to them and looked at Shiki, turned his head around and then sighed.

“You’re ok, right? You’re ok, Shiki?”

He nodded and in an instant, Shigure had lifted her onto the table next to him.

“But you’re not.”

He looked at her, studied her face, Akito followed his every movement.

“Ok, doesn’t need to be stitched up. You got away just fine, lady.”

There was love in his voice – actual love that just showed how much he still liked her despite all the hardships she had gone through.

“Shiki, can you get along for a moment? I want to talk to your mom for a second and clean her wound in the bathroom.”

Akito saw the boy nodding from the corner of her eyes, then she was pulled into the bathroom by her husband.  
As soon as he had softly closed the door, she was pulled towards him, against his chest, her legs gave in and she sank onto the toilet seat when she felt the edges of the toilet seat cutting into her knees.

“You can cry now, if you want to.”

If anyone had told her that Shigure would be this soft with her one day, she would have laughed. Shigure wasn’t a soft person. He was hard and cold, and he would do everything to achieve his goals – just like her.  
She breathed in once, then breathed out, then lost it.  
The tears streamed down her cheeks quicker than she would have liked them to, sinking into the cloth of the sweater he was wearing (the sweater she always got to wear in the evening, when Shiki was in bed, right after having sex with him).

“Are you wearing something below?”

It was just a mumble, she heard him laugh.

“Akito, not when-“

“I just want to wear your sweater, please.”

“Ok, if you need it this badly.”

He pulled it off over his head, then held it out for her to put it on. Akito wasn’t so much smaller than Shigure, but she still completely sank into it, sighing.  
He hugged her again. 

“Akito, can you tell me what happened?”

“I…”, she swallowed, breathed in again, buried her face in his t-shirt now, “I had business at the main estate and you weren’t home, so I took Shiki with her. And well, then she was right in front of us and… started freaking out. You know her.”  
She couldn’t hold herself back from saying it.  
“You know her better than I’d like you to.”

“Akito, please. That was years ago. I know it upset you. I’m sorry. I really am. I’m not really sorry about anything else, but I know that this was terribly childish. I hate this woman just as much as you do, if not even more.”

Akito nodded. Yeah. Sure. She wouldn’t really believe this. Shigure had liked ruining her by sleeping with Ren. He had liked playing those mind games – at least to a certain extent.

“Then… she went and attacked him. With a knife. I jumped in because you know, he’s my son. I couldn’t stand the thought of him being hurt, Shigure. I couldn’t. I don’t know what I would have done if she would have hurt him or- or killed him! What would I have been supposed to do? What would I-“

“He isn’t hurt, Akito. He isn’t. It’s all fine. But you’re hurt. Now, can I clean the wound?”

She nodded.  
That was the reaction she had expected. Not much fuss about it, not much fuss about her feelings. Just like it had always been.  
Shigure brushed the hair out of her face slowly, then reached for the disinfection spray and the package of band-aids.  
She didn’t dare to look at him. To look at his probably hard gaze.

“…Akito.”  
It was just her name, not really much to it, but his voice was terribly soft. Almost disgustingly sweet.  
“You’ve changed so much since back then.”

She grabbed him by the collar of the shirt, forcing him to look her into her eyes now. She couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Shigure, Shigure, was this how everyone else felt when I hurt them? Was this how Hatsuharu felt when I hurt Rin? I locked her up, Shigure”, her feelings were spilling over after all those years of trying to repress them, simply because someone she loved more than anything else had almost been hurt, “I- how did Kyo feel when I kept rubbing it under his nose that he’d be locked away for the rest of his life? What about Momiji when I slapped him? And Kisa and Hiro. I meant all of that. I’ve never felt bad about it until Tohru- until she wanted to become friends with me out all of sudden! How much did I hurt you by sleeping with Kureno for the sole sake of keeping him around me even though I’m such an absolutely awful person?”

She sobbed again – against the shirt she was holding onto. He had pulled her close again.  
Shigure’s smell had definitely become something she had held onto in the last few years. In her whole life, actually.

“I think… realizing that makes you the opposite of an awful person. I mean, slightly, at least. I don’t think the others will really forgive you. You’ve done too much for that. But if you apologize to some of them in person… for real… maybe they will… try to accept the apology at least, Akito. Look. You care so much about Shiki, don’t you? Now, put yourself into the position of Haru. How hurt would you have been if Ren had locked Shiki up and shaved his head?”

“I’d have killed her”, the confession was nothing new to Shigure either, it was more than obvious that despite how much better she had gotten, she still tended to get violent at times, “I think I seriously- I’d seriously kill her, Shigure. But Haru hasn’t- Well, he told me he would, but he didn’t.”

“What if we go to Haru and Rin tomorrow in the afternoon?”

“Shigure, she’ll go and kick me out and I can’t even say that it’s not rightfully so.”

“No, I’ll make them listen. I swear I will. Akito, you will feel better after it, even if the reactions aren’t good. But they’ll understand. They have twins, they will understand. There’s no need to forgive you, but you still need to do it for yourself.”

“I know.”

That was pretty much what her therapist had said. And of course, she had met both Hatsuharu and Rin a few times in those years. But the meetings had been cold. Mostly for business purposes. It’s not like she ever genuinely tried to apologize.

The disinfection spray hurt when he applied it, slowly wiping it away with a clean tissue a few seconds after, then opening the package of band-aids, sticking one onto her cheek.

“Even if it scars, that will just heighten your beauty, so don’t worry.”

A knock on the door pulled Akito out of her misery and she wiped her tears away.

“Come in, Shiki, you need a toilet?”

The boy opened the door, then walked over to Akito and stood in front of her firmly.

“Mom, I love you. And you’re… the nicest person in the world!”

That was the first time anyone had ever said that to her. Definitely the first time. And when he was older, he would probably never say it again. Of course not. It was a fact that she wasn’t.  
But part of her, part of her wanted to believe that at least something had changed inside of her and around her.  
Part of her wanted to believe that she had changed for the better and had at least adapted some of Tohru’s traits after years of being friends with her.

Shigure laughed. A quite giggle escaped his lips at first, then he laughed to the point of crying, his head slumping against her shoulder, he pulled Shiki close with the hand that wasn’t on Akito’s back.

“I swear, I either want to say ‘there, you heard it’ or ‘I beg to differ’ and I absolutely can’t choose what of those options I want to actually say out aloud. So there you go, you’ve got both now. Make of it what you want.”


End file.
